Using Online Communities as Research Panels

There is a very interesting article at MarketingSherpa.com following up on an interview with Hallmark’s Tom Brailsford (Manager of Advanced Capabilities). The article details how Hallmark has used an invitation only community to test concepts and ideas on its customers. While the results have been good overall, the interesting issues are:

1. Costs: an online community panel that runs 24/7/365 costs less than the $10,000 it would take to run three panels where you could interview only 24 people.
2. Make the community visual: If you are selling to consumers, ask your community members to submit pictures showing how they use your product. The insights you will gain will be invaluable as you ramp up your marketing.
3. Write your community guidelines very carefully: Anonymous posting is not conducive to good data collection and it increases the liklihood of flame wars (online fights) in the community. Also, make sure you moderate the site and get your members to accept the community guidelines before posting.

While much of what is discussed is common knowledge for organizations already running online communities, if you are considering using one for marketing purposes make sure you understand both the rewards and the risks before engaging your customers and prospects.

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Measuring Marketing ROI–> The Feedback Loop

Bitpipe released a very interesting study on best practices for Lead Generation and Management. The two findings that stood out were these:

72.6% agreed that the gap between the generation of sales leads by
marketing and the use of those leads by their sales team has made it
difficult to measure the ROI from their marketing efforts.

69% of those polled experienced difficulties in tracking contacts from
their lead generation programs through the sales cycle.

It has been our experience that these gaps are due to several structural issues. First, there is a lack of a common definition as to what a lead actually is. Second, there is minimal support from marketing once the lead is handed off to sales creating a blind prospect handshake that does not create a relationship between the two functions. Third, marketing does not follow up with sales to measure the effectiveness of their lead generation activities or ask how to further support the sales effort.

While there may always be gaps between sales and marketing forcing problems measuring ROI, it is our belief that using accurate online data (profiles, transactional data, and unstructured content) can help sales move prospects through the pipeline faster while also building a stronger reliance upon and relationship with marketing teams. These relationships can over time, help close the gap and allow for the measurement of ROI.

We continue to see online marketing evolve (especially B2B) as a better, more efficient and effective lead generator. The superior data generated helps to grow mutually dependent relationships that close the ROI feedback loop, reducing the structural impediments mentioned above.

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Distracting Users From Your Main Goal

eWeek’s December 6 issue has a great commentary by Technology Editor Peter Coffee on the frustrating growth in adding entertainment to websites. The summary: “Don’t waste your visitors time!”

We’ve found that most business executive users learned to ignore and skip flash introductions a long time ago. Flashing banners, spinning icons, and scrolling text boxes were universally rejected in user testing we performed for a large B2B client. Yet, most marketing teams defer to their design teams to make the site exciting.

This misses a key objective… Understand why a user visits and give them what they want quickly. (See our post on Personas for additional creative ideas on how to stay on track.) If your objective is to get buyers to utilize your online offerings, whether they are consumers or the elusive Business Decision Maker (BDM), you must deliver the key benefits early and often. Don’t waste their time….

Here is the article: Don’t Entertain Me

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Personas – Integrated Use Brings Success

I’ve recently been sent an excellent article by Jared Spool of UIE on the use of personas for planning and updating sites by my friend Sandy Moreland who runs many of the online activities for AARP (including their excellent community site).

The key to this article is not that personas are something new, but rather that pervasive utilization of them can help organizations avoid mis-steps when dealing with their customers/members/prospects online. To quote the team that wrote the report:

“When teams use personas well, every member of the team really does seem to be on the same page about who the users are and what design will workbest for them. We haven’t seen any other technique come close to gettingthis kind of result.”



To those of us in the online marketing arena, using personas should be a must. Personas breathe life into those ideas about how to entice and capture the attention and more importantly actions of our targeted audience. Personas aren’t just for online communities anymore…

Here’s the article. Let me know your thoughts.

Three Important Benefits of Personas

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Latin America Online B2B Marketing

We’ve been working on a project that has taken us throughout Latin America to discuss internet marketing. The models for B2B online marketing using community, newsletters, email, and ads are similar, but the culture calls for a very different implementation. Unlike most American businesses, many of these business people will respond and expect a personal follow-up. In fact, many of the business leaders we spoke with have asked to hold offline meetings after viewing online events in order to network and socialize the ideas with their peers and the sponsoring company.

So, the upshot here is that if you integrate your online programs to coordinate and encourage offline meetings, you will have more success than online alone. At least in Latin America… but couldn’t this work just as well in the US?

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Online Community Roundtable Looking For A Few Good Members

I had a nice conversation with my friend Joe Cothrel today about the Online Community Summit that Jim Cashel runs in Sonoma. In our discussion, Joe mentioned that several attendees on the east coast were looking for an event closer to home. While that style of event is under consideration, an online roundtable focused upon community and online marketing is looking to add a few good members to its ranks.

Sounds like the Marines, huh? But it’s not…

For the past four years, I have helped run a roundtable for online community teams focused on business issues of community such as member retention, lead generation, ROI, organizational design, etc. We’ve grown from our four charter members (SAP, Cisco, Mercury Interactive, and Participate Systems) to over ten members (including AARP, Consumer Reports, Apple, Intel, Sun, and researchers and academics). However, we are always looking for members that can be an integral part of the roundtable and contribute.

The next roundtable will be held in Washington D.C. at AARP’s headquarters in April 2005 (final dates tbd). We do not charge for membership or attending our meetings. We simply ask that you participate and consider hosting a future meeting.

If you would like to be considered for membership. Please send me an email by visiting our site Impact Interactions and using our contact us page to tell us about your interest.

We hope to hear from you!

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Renewed Interest in Online Community Management?

I was surprised to see a new post on Lee Lefever’s blog about looking for Community Management companies. While a few on his list are not really in the management services area anymore, it was interesting that he is looking. What is missing are the consultants like Sylvia Marino and Amy Jo Kim who can also do this… Here’s the link. If you can help Lee, please do so.

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Documentum Case Study on Continuous Marketing Online

This case study is an excellent resource for anyone looking to use the internet for eMarketing. Looking through the content, it is clear that Documentum gets it. Using separate areas, communities (events), and other best practices for engaging and involving site visitors has helped them not only learn more about their customer needs, but also has resulted in better measurement and lead generation.

Here’s the link to the PDF document: Documentum Case Study

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Entering the Blogosphere

A quick welcome to you for visiting our blog.

We aim to provide you with content of interest regarding online marketing, specifically using our experiences with clients to help you succeed in your organization. We encourage you to comment on our thoughts and experiences and share our knowledge with anyone it can help.

Coming from the Online Community world, we’ve been dismayed to find minimal interactive sources for online marketing information online. While we participate in MarketingProfs forums and learn a bit there from their content, what we find missing is the real world examples of how online marketing can work to help organizations in a more efficient and effective manner. We also look at trends from eMarketer and content from Marketing Sherpa.

With our experiences with companies such as SAP, AARP, Cisco, Cabelas, ATT WorldNet, and others, we think there is a lot more knowledge to share than is currently published. So, this is a blog that’s all about your issues and how others have solved them, not a blog that’s all about us. Think of it as an online roundtable resource…

So, we will strive to be a true best practices blog for those of you working to improve your online marketing efforts.

Again, welcome to the Impact Interactions blog.

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